


In Devotion and Sacrifice

by EnigmaticInsignia



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, High School, M/M, Modern Day, Reincarnation, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4886200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnigmaticInsignia/pseuds/EnigmaticInsignia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over a century after failing to fulfill their contract, Sebastian finds the reincarnation of his former master--now an embittered high school sophomore in Victoria, British Columbia. As the mistakes of their past and past lives close in, Sebastian and the former Ciel must rebuild their bond or face a consequence even Sebastian hadn't anticipated. (A re-write of a fic hosted on ff.net.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Failure

For an ending, it had always seemed anti-climactic. A kidnapping, a bullet and one mistake was all it had taken. Ciel Phantomhive was dead.

It was such a boring way to go, and to add even more reason for spite, it had happened while the boy was protecting that fiancée of his. She’d been fully capable of protecting herself. Ciel had been tactless, reckless, but it was no excuse. Where had Sebastian been that he hadn’t stopped it?

He couldn't remember anymore.

He didn't want to believe it was his mistake, yet the more he resisted, the more certain he became that it must have been, hence he’d chosen to forget. Regrets had no place among demons. It was disgrace enough to breach a contract. The least he could do for his dignity was imagine a scenario where the end was beyond his control.

Time passed, as it always did. And, as cliché as it was to claim, nothing was the same.

For one thing, he was no longer “Sebastian”. His name was provided by his master. His identity shifted to suit the needs of his contract.

Creating a new contract never took long. So many peoples, saturated with loathing and selfishness, saw naught but a world of want. The abstract concept of a soul was nothing to them until it was their entirety. The centuries had jaded society as it had him. Humans had become such careless scum that taking sustenance felt like swallowing a pill, tasteless, ungratifying.

He tried to counter this by becoming more selective. A dignified, prideful soul desperate with ambition, with just enough of a conscience to anticipate the consequences but driven enough not to care, those were the ones he sought. There was a reason his criteria had become so specific. Every time he thought about what he wanted to taste, his mind wandered back to the one he never got to try. 

The currently contract free demon had manifested in to an indoor marketplace humans referred to as a ‘mall’. His superiors would infer he was searching for a contract. He doubted he’d bother.

The air was littered with noise, voices squawking the least refined slang to touch his ears yet. He strolled by packs of adolescents with lamentable posture, through the buzz of inane, repetitive melodies, to the storefront a dear friend called home.

Wide hetero-chromic eyes stared at him as he approached, one a pallid green and the other a smoky blue. She rose towards the window, her mouth opened to reveal the dainty tips of her tiny fangs. Her tail swayed rhythmically, thumping the nearest wall.

The being once known as Sebastian gazed into the depths of her eyes in admiration. “Good afternoon, lady Aurora. I see you are as radiant as ever.”

It may have been his imagination that the lady’s mew was a pleased ‘hello’, but he’d believe it nonetheless. If only they had creatures this lovely in hell.

He ran a gloved finger across the surface of the glass, tracing a squiggle. Aurora braced herself, wiggled her butt, and pounced at the appendage. Her soft, squishy paws pressed against the glass, struggling to reach him.

If he could find a master to take the cat, maybe he’d stick around. Not all humans were as allergic to the fluffy balls of adorability as Ciel had been. Some even went so far as to  _like_  them. One of his previous mistresses had. He could remember how much he with ended up despising that woman, but she was probably his favorite of the past century thanks to the cat.

"Were I able to keep you, I would. It is a shame that my living arrangements would be beneath your standards," he admired.

Aurora mewed in what he imagined to be a final plea. Her giant, mismatched eyes glistened through the glass, straight towards the cockles of a heart he didn’t have. His hand paused.

Maybe dealing with a master wouldn’t be so terrible, provided they were open to pet adoption. He could always imply the cat was part of the deal. Familiars weren’t unheard of amongst the supernatural. Granted, familiars were witches’ territory, but modern humans hardly knew the difference between a chupacabra and a churro. They weren’t exactly equipped to identify the customs of hell.

Aurora turned her head, rubbing her cheek against the glass affectionately. He cooed to her the most soothing truth he could manage—the only truth he’d speak in quite some time. "Perhaps, by tomorrow, the circumstances will have changed."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the inoffensively taupe couch currently engulfing him to the giant bowl of candy and half-filled coloring books, the pediatric inpatient office belittled him. A woman with copper ringlets sat on a proportionally appropriate chair on the opposite side of the room, legs crossed, pencil ready, clipboard resting atop her knee.

Sunlight glared off the metal nameplate across the psychiatrist’s desk. It took a surprising amount of willpower for him not to return the gesture. Already, Dr. Newmann was an enemy.

“Now, now, I know this isn’t comfortable for you, so we’ll start slow. This is a safe place. It’s important you’re comfortable here,” the doctor explained, each word ringing shallow, a sales pitch for trust. He knew her words were false for the same reason he was stuck in this glorified playroom. There were no safe places.

“So,” Dr. Newmann continued, interpreting his silence as understanding instead of contempt, “let’s start small. Simple. Get to know each other.”

For a fraction of a second, he let his stare lift off her name plate, straight to Dr. Newmann. His lone eye froze over. “I don’t need to be here.

Dr. Newmann shifted forward, her shoulders scrunching towards him. “This isn’t about need, Cian. It’s for us to be sure there isn’t a need, or give you help, if you did happen to. Think of it like a yearly check-up, but for your mind.”

“But circumstantially motivated, so, it’s intrinsically nothing alike?”

The woman’s false smile toned down, her pleasantness giving way to sympathy. “Everyone needs a person to keep their secrets. A confidant. That’s what I’m here for. There’s not a thing you can say to me that won’t leave this room.” Unless, of course, it involved child abuse or intent to harm himself or others.

“I’m familiar with confidentiality laws, doctor. Don’t patronize me.”

Again, he could spot the shrink shrinking into herself. The tip of her pencil pressed to the paper, no doubt marking him guarded, hostile, uncooperative. She cleared her throat twice. “Then you know, it’s OK to answer. I’m a friend,” who is paid an exorbitant amount of money by the government to stand talking to him.

“You have access to my medical file and pertinent police reports. I’d expect you’re familiar already.”

The clipboard lowered. “Cian,” she repeated, as if knowing his name meant knowing him, “I’m not interrogating you. You don’t have to talk unless you’d like to,” spend an hour every other day for months on end being asked the same questions repeatedly.

Cian plucked a lollipop from the bowl and twisted the wrapper. His lone eye affixed to the candy, watching it unfurl. It wasn’t the act itself that entranced him, but the way he perceived it, flattened through his sole functional eye. If he’d not already known the proportions, he could’ve hardly seen the size difference between the sucker and Dr. Newmann’s head.

To admit what happened as if it wasn’t traumatic, like it hadn’t ripped his strength and dignity straight from his soul—that was the quickest way to leave.

It was a good time to lie.

If he let his concentration slip, the memories overtook him. The white haze of floodlights. The skid and crunch of metal twisting his arms. His mother’s nails pressing to his neck, trembling, clawing through flesh to his very blood. Even now, surrounded by artificial lemon and melting crayons, he could hear acid singing the shower curtain, her screaming in duress.

Even a week later, under a moderate dose of painkillers, her words kept corroding him. ‘You’re not my son. Never were. You stole him. My son’s face. You took it. Give it back! You demon, give him back. Give him back. Die and give him back!’ He grit his teeth around the stick.

The doctor cleared her throat, again. “We can just sit, if you’d like.”

Cian pushed the candy against his cheek. His shoulders straightened, adopting regality he’d had no right to possess.

“A month ago, my family was in a car accident. I broke my leg. My step-father, his arm. My mother,” was an empty shell. The sheen drained in her eyes. In its place, a husk of cold rage. 

“She hadn’t appeared injured, then. An undiagnosed intracranial hemorrhage triggered a psychotic break, Capgras’ syndrome,” She’d smacked his head against the bathroom wall, knocked him down by his knees and tried to drown him in hydrochloric acid, all the while screaming. “She attacked me while I was asleep, dragged me to our bathroom and tried to drown me. My step-father intervened.”

Cian concentrated on the taste of cherry. Still, he felt his mother’s emptiness drift across him. Everything else was a false veneer of comfort in a nightmare.  

“I know it wasn’t her. The physical pain’s there, of course, but, she’s being treated. She’ll come back. Frankly, I’m just happy we’re all still alive.” The faintest of deliberate nervous laughs sputtered from him on his last word, just short of an equally feigned, stifled sob.

From far before the day he was born, he’d always had a gift for lying. It was a shame he could so rarely use it on himself.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sunset slapped him on the way outside. The hospital walls and fading leaves shone ablaze in the orange light. It would’ve given Cian pause if he wasn’t so desperate to leave.

The tip of his cane scratched the pavement, tracing his next plodding step. He had a long walk home, and a short dusk to travel by. He trudged ahead, so focused on his departure, he’d hardly noticed the rumble from his step-father’s car.

A navy blue Civic crept along the curve, matching his pace down the sidewalk. A mop of mussy curls craned around the driver’s side window, looking to Cian’s back. “Key—“

Vaughn Crowley was by far the creepiest coroner in the province, which was a bit like being the worst dressed vagrant at a homeless shelter. From his perpetually rumpled clothes to his thick-rimmed repressed-librarian glasses and wisps of an insomniac’s beard, he was a perfect projection of an imminent mental breakdown. He was also Cian’s stepfather.

Vaughn’s words could’ve been a dagger at the nape of Cian’s neck, and he wouldn’t have jolted any more upright. His gaze flat-lined at the sight. “You should’ve called.”

“Thought you’d notice.”

“Of course. Anyone would see you. Most of whom would suspect you’re plotting to kidnap me.”

Vaughn’s mouth twisted at his words to come, cracking near a weak smile. “This generic them overestimates me. Would you mind getting in? Idle cars, pollutions’ work.”

Cian stood still, tentatively eyeing the clutter past the tinted windows. Paper bags, cups and newspaper pages all waited to be crushed by a stray foot. The stench of old French fries and former fish sandwiches was imminent. Barely a week without his mother around, and already the pair were drowning in rubbish.

“Yes.”

Vaughn paused for a second, mentally recalibrating. “Would you be open to bribery?”

Cian was remarkably unenthused. “Theoretically. Caramel macarons and blueberry tea, for instance.”

“Which I’d hypothetically accept.”

Vaughn lifted his hand from the steering wheel. He flipped the latch on the passenger side door and nudged it ajar.

Cian leaned against the car. He reached his cane into the mound of fallen food wrappings and knocked them to the floor. With the upholstery now visible, he planted his heels at the edge of the seat, pulled his knees to his chest and condensed himself into the lone clean spot. He slammed the door.

A dissatisfied realization slipped from Vaughn’s mouth, thoughtless and blunt as ever. His forehead pressed into his hands.  “God. I could lure you to a van with candy.”

Somehow, the aroma of rotten food was completely overtaken by the pungency of formaldehyde. He pressed his nose to his knees to suppress the smell. “Don’t worry. I only extort from you.”

“Actually, I’d prefer you not extort anyone.”

“Admirable.” Cian’s eye barely rose above his sleeves to peer suspiciously back. “Should I leave, then?”

“No, no. You’re fine. I’m not. Not nearly Machiavellian enough to’ve expected that to work. And if you let anyone lure you with sweets, best they’re the first person who’d be questioned. Yeah,” A veil of gloom and tension fell between them, so striking, even the formaldehyde faded away.

Vaughn twitched his head and reoriented towards the dashboard. The engine rumbled, hungry and unstable as the people inside.

It took a terrible thirty seconds before he managed to ask. “How terrible was the doctor, exactly?”

“Imperfectly adequate.”

“Oh. How, nondescript.” Vaughn’s head shifted slightly. His eyes set on the rearview mirror, connecting with Cian’s through his reflection. “You know, we could try someone else. A guy, or,” the phone could start ringing. “Shit. Work.”

Even without peeking, Cian could visualize an exasperated slump in Vaughn’s shoulders. The front seat crinkled enough to imply Vaughn had turned towards him. “Would you mind?”

Of course Cian did. Vaughn might be one missed anti-psychotic from a spree killer, but, he was family—and as such, it was only natural to lie to him.

“If it involves your paycheck, no.”

“There’s a dinner in the fridge. Salmon. Three days captured. Should be minimally toxic.”

Cian made a mental note to find something edible in the house that didn’t have a quantifiable toxicity. He tolerated Vaughn, but sometimes he worried he’d open the fridge and find a severed hand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As expected, Vaughn’s work stretched far into the night. Cian’s as had well, though for different reasons. While his step-father was busy with scalpels, microscopes and the dead, Cian used a laptop, beads and a sewing machine.

Cian awoke to the repeating thirty second score of a DVD menu. The orange and blue background of _The Princess Bride_ stared down from his computer monitor. The family cat, Eulalie, was sound asleep across the keyboard, her paws blocking the power button. A clock at the bottom gleamed with the time. Twelve after midnight.

The beaded lace and bowler in his grasp wasn’t what he’d imagined. The beads hardly reached halfway across the netting he’d set them on. They laid haphazardly, limply, as if decayed by time. He set the piece upon his head and gazed into the mirror. A sewing pin pricked his finger.

Cian plucked the pin from the hat. He stuck it in a stuffed rabbit on his dresser, held his breath, and listened to the pulse of his home. The air conditioner whirred, constant, churning below.

He rose from his seat, opened the window, and overlooked the mid-October evening. The blur of illuminated street lamps obscured the moon and burning rocks. No clouds lingered. If he hadn't known better, he’d mistake the horizon for a blank slate, desolate, waiting to be marked.

The reasonable part of himself knew he should’ve gone to bed. His project wasn’t finished. He wasn’t ready. There were so many excuses, and none of them meant a thing.

Cian flipped on his air purifier, masking the silence. He arranged a mannequin head, a wig and a body pillow on his bed as a stand in for himself, just in case Vaughn got home and started looking. He rushed into his closet for a jacket, grabbed a duffel bag from under the bed, and left the room, the door ajar just enough for Eulalie to exit if she so chose.

On his way out, he made two stops. The first was to the fridge in the basement, where he pulled out a bottle of his mother’s wine. The second was to the front hall. Vaughn kept a spare key inside a gray duster coat at the back of the closet. By taking the spare, Cian was able to lock the door while leaving his normal key dangling innocuously from the rack.

The midnight air was brisk with misty rain and a violet chill, and the streets loomed with the liveliness of a funeral procession. Cian huddled into his coat, tapped his cane forward and continued. A few steps in, the patter became a metronome. Already, he could feel himself drifting. A few hundred steps in, he paused to open the wine. He gulped straight from the bottle. His mind could use some numbness. 

However long it had taken Cian to reach his destination, by the time he’d arrived, he had all the grace of a weeble.

A wooden sign, dark green with golden embellishments, marked the building as 'St. Augustine's Church and School'. The sidewalks were outlined with stones and overflowing shrubs, bursting with last life before winter. The paths veered in opposite directions across the plot—to the left, the long, brick rectangle of a school, and to the right, the chapel.

Cian knew he was the only person here. Who else would bother? He wouldn't have come either, if he hadn't found one of the universal keys lying about, abandoned by careless janitorial staff. Besides, he had something to do.

The chapel wasn’t particularly grand, but in the dead of an empty night, even the pillared archway of the entrance reached the vacant sky. Etchings of angels hovered above, engraved in fading marble. An inscription rest beneath them, long rendered illegible by time.

Cian plopped an exhausted shoulder against the door and pressed in. As he expected, it didn't budge. He fumbled the key into the lock and twisted. The door released, and he hobbled inside.

Stained glass windows lined each wall, cast in shades of varying blues and browns from the lack of light. Cian flipped the switch beside the entryway. Beams flooded the space, revealing the pews, aisle and altar. Colors brightened in the glass, navy to royal blue, brown to maroon or sienna.

Cian collapsed into a back pew. His bags crashed along with him. The hat drifted forward, barely staying in place. He nudged the brim up with the back of his hand, finished a swig from the bottle, and unpacked his supplies from the duffel bag—a digital camera and collapsible tri-pod.

“Pheh,” A wheezing chuckle slipped into the stale air, recognizing the unintended play on words in what so many expected of him. He was here to shoot himself.  

A tremor passed through his hands, pointless, but insistent. It took a couple of tries for him to screw his camera on the tri-pod. By the third, it was secure. He set the legs atop the pew, stand up beside it, and search of the right angle. When he’d stopped, one window’s image was in view—a bare cross with the crown of thorns. The lightbulbs upon the ceiling were set in such a way that every floating speck of dust gleamed in the viewfinder.

Cian marked the camera’s timer for two minutes. He grabbed the next pew over to lean against while he climbed to the floor. Once his feet were firmly settled, he slipped from his trench coat. The wool pooled at his feet, revealing the rest.

He was dressed in a hairline-striped navy blue vest with black lace over the lapel, matching shorts, and a ruffled off-white shirt. The shirt dipped into an asymmetrical point at the back left side. Glass beads dripped from the edges, pulling the fabric towards the floor. A repainted compass dangled from his neck. The overall effect was as striking as it was androgynous and subsequentially uncomfortable.

If anyone spotted him, he’d never hear the end of this. Were he able to talk to someone about this, he’d have rather asked a girl to model. Unfortunately, asking someone meant telling them he was considering studying costume design. That wasn’t happening. He’d have better odds avoiding bullies if he submitted a formal request for them to glitter-bomb his locker.

He followed the angle of the camera by pointing his finger towards the lens. This forced him to walk—or rather, wobble—back towards the window. He gripped two unsteady hands along the image’s ledge and wiggled his way up.  

He leaned back against the window. At first, he meant to keep his balance. By the third second of resting there, he was just tired. His left leg fell off the perch, dangling towards the floor. His arms wrapped around his one folded knee and pushed himself away, letting the exhaustion wave over him.

The clock kept on ticking. No signs flashed from the camera. There were no electronics humming, no birds chirping, not even a car speeding down an empty street. It was a full, perfect silence, and in it, the minute dragged on in a lie of forever.

This whole church felt the same way. On the surface, it was beautiful, but it was never honest. Every day, people told themselves they’d be better. They wished and pleaded, and told themselves it was fine simply because they’d tried. As if there was a God, and he’d want to bother with people.

Each passing second sent new bubbles to his boiling blood. His eyes sharpened on the shrine, fixating, dwelling, until his frustrations started slurring out.

“Damn it! You…!” His temper snagged in his throat, remembering the camera.

Cian lowered his chin. He slid back against the window. In spite of his efforts to keep his pose, he collapsed against the glass, and the intent of a glare lingered in his slightly reddened eye.

It was worth noting he’d passed through having a slight buzz into a semi-intoxicated mess. Within the course of seconds, that unfocused gaze had settled firmly on the altar, and his ramblings to a slightly slurred yet remarkably coherent tirade. He was alone. He might as well speak his mind.

“I presume you’re not here. If you are, then, in your image, maybe that’s not off, considering, we’re all bloody, bleeding egotistical hypocrites. Why should anyone worship you? What have you done? Make life? Hah,” he scoffed with what was clearly meant to be sarcasm, but sounded more in the range of a hiccup.

“No one asks to exist. Then you beckon, listen. Your orders, morals, they’re detrimental at best. Those who bother, they get dismantled, for what? To come back to where they were? To prove to you, who, omniscient, by definition, then, must already know what’ll happen, they have the right to perpetuate what you forced on them? That you gave and revoked? To make someone already aware, let them loose, watch them fail, suffer, starve, murder for you, lay waste on cities, people, and claim you love them—which are you, sadist or a failure?”

Somewhere along the line, the drunken gloss in his eyes had switched to a cold sweat. For someone who supposedly didn't care, his blasphemy was remarkably impassioned.

The flash bulb flickered. Splotches of multi-colored light stained his eyelids. His composure didn’t matter, anymore.

He slammed his palm against the glass twice in succession. “What does it matter that you exist? If you exist, if you ever did. Free will, illnesses, they’re excuses. You took them from me!”

Another strained laugh shifted mid-breath into a hiccup, then another, until he couldn’t utter a word. Somewhere in the back of his heart, he was ashamed something so simple was making him crack. He kept feeling as if he’d endured so much worse, that this should be nothing.  

It wasn’t just that he’d come close to death. He had to persuade himself that the one person alive who he unequivocally loved didn’t mean to kill him. The only other force to blame was a God he didn’t want to believe in.

When Cian’s hiccups slowed to staggered, shallow breaths, he slouched, his forehead collapsing to his knees. The hat fell straight from his head. He hadn’t noticed.

His voice lowered, the anger dissipating in favor of accusation. "You aren't merciful. Not even sane. Be, take responsibility. Our mistakes are yours. If we’re wrong, destroy us. Smite me. And know that I’d hold more faith in this world if I’ve spoken to walls alone.”

Those vindictive words couldn't travel far, but they lingered. It wasn’t by God, but he had been heard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The entity once known as Sebastian had taken to scavenging. For the past few hours, he'd been listening to any and all pleas strong enough to reach him. Regardless of where their utterers physically were or what language they spoke in, he could hear every bitter syllable. Yet, after hours of masses droning in unison, one voice drowned out the rest with a dissatisfied slur.

Sebastian remembered that voice. The accent was different, but the tone was identical, and it pulled him like a magnet. It was compelling enough a sensation that before he was even fully aware he’d moved, he'd already appeared from whence it called.

While he could’ve theoretically stepped foot inside the chapel, he opted for a distant approach. He kept watch from afar, perched between branches of a barren tree, facing the window. What he saw stole his words. There was no way for him to mistake that face. The similarities were so exact that it couldn’t possibly be anyone but Ciel. A fragment of the past sat crouched beyond a stained glass window.

The instant that Sebastian laid eyes on the boy, his hand began to sear. He yanked off his glove and looked to the back of his hand just in time to see the mark of their pact engraved anew, the same seal in the same place it rest so long ago.

Sebastian had never heard of this. It was rare enough that the soul of a human under contract escaped. That a human who would sell their soul would find enough redemption to reincarnate was practically impossible. Self-sacrifice didn’t negate all evil acts, but it did redeem, and apparently had done so to enough of a point that Ciel had been sent back down. He couldn't be admitted into heaven, clearly, but he must have been cleansed just enough that someone would feel bad for damning him, so the other powers that be sent him back.

And yet he’d called again. Not consciously, not with an obvious purpose, yet, he had.

It was the soul, not the body, which a demon would bind itself to, but the previous conditions were no longer attainable. Whoever killed Ciel’s parents should’ve been long gone. That should’ve negated the contract. Why it hadn’t, Sebastian didn’t know, but somehow, he didn’t yet feel pressed to question. The important part was that he was there, alive, tangible, within his grasp.

The words wouldn't reach Ciel from the other side of the surface, but he formed them all the same. They were close enough to cause a chill to run through the boy's veins, one which he’d inevitably attribute to the cold.

"Good night, young master."


	2. Charade

It was a saying prevalent among humans and shared among his fellows that playing with your food was a mistake. Sebastian had witnessed many of his peers create their own undoing by toying with their prey. By most forms of logic, the danger should have discouraged his new idea. It didn't.

Besides, it was necessary that he take  _s_ _ome_  sort of action. He couldn't simply wait around to be called upon by a person who wouldn't even know that they could. Sebastian had never tried telling a stranger that they were his master through a Faustian pact in their past life, but he was under the distinct impression that it would somehow end even worse than it started.

None of the above meant he had to take his time. On the contrary, the sooner he initiated contact, the better. If he happened to have a bit of fun, so be it.

Sebastian tailed the boy back to his home from a safe distance, just to be sure he was capable of walking while intoxicated, before he vanished into the shadows.

* * *

Cian had barely managed to get three hours of sleep before his alarm started blaring. The overly-enthusiastic chatter of a radio DJ after enough caffeine to energize an elephant pounded at his head.

When faced with this issue, most people would've either woken up or smacked the snooze button. Cian grabbed the clock, yanked the cord until the plug popped straight from the socket, and tossed it on the carpet. For a moment, the room fell silent. Then, he heard a purr.

His mother's cat, Eulalie, was snoozing contently between his neck and chest. Her right paw bopped his nose. In other words, a nine-and-a-half pound living paperweight was happily attempting to suffocate him.

"Go away, damn brat." Cian flung a limp hand towards what he had guessed was the cat's face to shoo her off. Eulalie licked his fingers. Somehow, she was even louder than the radio. He shuddered.

Cian rolled to the left, forcing Eulalie to budge. She pounced off of him with enough of a thwack to wind him. He flopped his arm over the bed and wheezed awake. The clock flashed six am, tormenting him with what little sleep he'd mustered. He staggered his way across the hall with all the coordination of the previous' night's stupor.

A frayed scrap of notebook paper had been taped to the master bedroom door. Cian paused at the note. The bubbling brook of a nature CD crept into the hall. The handwriting slanted to the right, the letters scrunched together to fit between the narrow lines. " _Breakfast in top right hand corner of freezer. Lunch in fridge, mid-center shelf. If bus breaks/other transit to school necessary, call Penny at 778-805-0995. Endure the day. –Vaughn_ "

Cian plucked the note off the wall, crumpled it in his fist, and chucked it in the bathroom rubbish. If nothing else, it was a request he stood a chance of accomplishing.

Once successfully bathed, Cian changed into the light gray suitcoat with yellow piping, black tie, collared shirt and maroon, black and yellow tartan trousers of his school uniform. He grabbed both meals from their spots, threw the pre-made omelet in the microwave, stuck the eggs in a Styrofoam cup and ate on his way. He slapped his own note to the back of the door as he left. The page dangled from one spot of blue sticky-tac. " _You still owe me macarons_."

He could've waited for the bus. The bus was terrible. Walking was boring, but to be boring meant it wasn't inflicting substantial pain. An ever-present mist hung in the morning air, too thick and tangible to be humidity, yet too fine to call rain. Passing cars kicked up water by the curb. Commuters cluttered the sidewalks. He tried to focus on the passing people, to avoid considering himself. It didn't help. From puddles to the rumbles of distant strangers' words, everything kept coming up a memory.

Too quickly for comfort, the green and gold sign marking St. Augustine's crept into view. Cian swerved with the onslaught of classmates into the hallowed, emotionally-hollow halls of his high school.

The first two minutes were surprisingly simple. He kept his head down, avoided eye contact and grabbed his first three classes' worth of books from his locker. Five steps later, that surprise was forced to fade. A trio of fellow sophomores stopped their meaningless jibber so one could interject an "aargh" at his back.

Cian willed himself not to dignify it by looking. He'd been taunted enough to pretend the instigators were beneath him. If only his acquaintances had that much sense.

"Oi, Caleb! Shut yer cake-and-pie hole!" a senior shouted across the hall, her footsteps stomping over almost as loudly as her words.

The offending classmate—Caleb, evidently—crinkled his nose back at her., annoyed "What?"

If it weren't for the uniform skirt and knee socks, Dorothy Whitley could've passed for a guy. She had long enough nose and loud enough mouth for it. On someone daintier, her caramel pixie cut and freckles could've seemed feminine. They weren't. The convenience of her splotchy face having a name that could be shortened to Dot hadn't been lost on anyone, herself included.

Within ten seconds, Dot had sandwiched herself between Cian and the cluster of classmates. She was tall enough to tower over all of them. "Don't give me that. What, next you're gonna tip over some kid's wheelchair?" she shouted down.

"Wait, what?" Caleb snorted. "You're angry for Grimy?" He reached out and yanked Cian by the tie. In spite of Cian's best efforts to cling to his cane and not move, he teetered sideways.

Dot planted her hands on her barely existent hips. Her eyebrows narrowed. "Yeah, duh. Who wouldn't be?"

Cian shifted his books under his arm. He reached towards his tie to undo the knot. "It's irrelevant."

"You, too?" Dot huffed.

Caleb pulled Cian's tie again, forcing him to wobble. "See, even he doesn't give a shit!"

Cian slipped the tie off his neck. He leaned half a step back, away from Dot and Caleb, and brushed at his shoulder. "I only account for opinions of the cognizant."

Both Caleb and Dot sent him varying degrees of confused looks. Caleb's added a twinge of anger for good measure. "What the hell'd you say?"

"Words."

"Pfft—" Dot snorted.

Caleb gave the distinct look of wanting to punch someone. Cian took another step back. Before he could retreat any further, Dot yanked Cian by the collar and pulled him down the hall. She snatched the tie from Caleb, then raised it above her head in a backwards wave goodbye. "Screw you, baron butt-munch!"

Barely two seconds and a turn down the hall later, Dot was slapping Cian on the back. His posture tensed.

"Hey, Cian. Good to see ya among the living!" she chirped, sounding far more like she'd just arrived at his birthday party than pulling him away from torment—which was appropriate, given how much he hated birthdays.

"I regret not disappointing you."

"Again, with the pretty words. I told ya, you wanna keep talking like that, bring me a dictionary. I know you're all freaky genius and stuff, but, c'mon! Know yer crowd. Or me."

"Has it occurred to you I'm deliberately discouraging you?"

"Yeah, but you can't win. No one defeats friendship," Dot released Cian's shoulder from her grasp, scuffed her dress shoes along the floor, and turned halfway, walking backwards to face him directly. Her features softened with what was supposed to be concern, but seemed more like intrigue. "So, what happened, dude? You OK, what, with the eye and stuff?" She pointed at her face.

"Of course," he lied.

She spoke over him. "Bumping into walls or any of that junk? If you're having problems, I could lead you around, be a seeing-eye person."

"No less than-"

"Cause you know I'm real good at holding stuff. Doors. Books. Secrets?"

Cian put his hand on top of Dot's, pulling her off of his collar. "Something held can be released. Secrets aren't. They're either retained or unworthy of their possessor."

"Why, thanks, Wiktionary, ya right bastard."

"It's an inevitable betrayal, saying what shouldn't be shared."

"What, you going phantom of the opera on me? You're too short for that!" Dot rolled her eyes. "Pipsqueak like you wouldn't even make a decent Raoul."

Her annoyance was more welcoming than her sympathy, so Cian intentionally derailed her. "Novel or the musical?"

"Darn English Lit class. Making me read this romance stalker ghost junk. The book ain't even English, everyone's French!"

"Or Swedish."

Dot practically skidded to a stop in the hall. Her eyebrow raised quizzically. "Wait, you read this crap?"

"Musical."

Again, Dot paused. He could practically see the light bulb illuminate over her head. "Hey, wanna help me study? I get a B or higher, I'll bake ya so many cupcakes you'll barf sprinkles!"

At least Dot had stopped wanting to help him. That made it much easier for Cian to take an evasive step towards his homeroom with some dignity intact. "No. Goodbye."

Even without looking, Cian could feel Dot pointing him down. "You skip third period and I'll hunt yer tuckus down myself, ya hear?" she paused long enough for him to open the door. "You do still hear, yeah?"

He peered through the crack between the door and frame, to the one little sliver left of Dot. "No."

Cian's homeroom class was still. The instructor, perched at her desk with ever watchful eyes, was enough to intimidate his peers into a deafening pause. He took his seat and joined the quiet.

Soon thereafter, the morning bell chimed and tardy students rushed and rustled to their seats. Cian ignored it all. The announcements hadn't changed. Weather. Morning prayer. Sports team performance. Faculty birthdays. Cian pressed his hands over his eye and consciously tried to daydream.

He was disrupted by a prod at his side. He jolted upright and looked to the source. The student to his left had been staring straight at him. Once they spotted his eye on them too, they leaned towards him and whispered. "Hey, Grimsgard, you're supposed to be smart. Did you understand the reading last night for Michaelis' class? Because all I got out of it was that the pilgrims were society's rejects and some boats sank, and I know there's more to it since the questions made no sense…"

Two things were wrong about that question. Cian responded to the first. "I was absent."

"Oh. Bummer."

The second problem should've been nothing. Cian could've ignored it as easily as the loudspeakers. The context implied this girl meant their history teacher, but that class was taught by Mrs. Gordon. He'd never heard of a Michaelis. The question rattled him. Maybe ten seconds later, it spurted out, hushed as what the girl had asked. "Is Mrs. Gordon ill?"

"Who?" the girl squinted, confused.

How could she not know Mrs. Gordon? Mrs. Gordon wore skirts literally made out of recycled tablecloths, smelled like egg salad and collected fake license plates from amusement parks. They were all over the back wall of the classroom.

"Are you remedial history?" Cian asked, unsure how she couldn't know this otherwise.

The girl's hair visibly puffed around her when she turned in a huff, something he'd not seen outside of a cartoon. "Uh, no. And if you don't want to help you can just say so or something. Jerk."

If he wasn't sure she'd been screwing with him before, he knew now. Still, the subject bugged him. Of all things to tease him over, why gaslight him about their history teacher?

Perplexing as it was, Cian didn't have the time to dwell. The announcements were over. If he didn't want to pay attention in class, he at least needed to copy the lectures verbatim to review them later.

The homeroom group trudged in their designated clump towards first period, then second, then third. All classes without special supply requirements, like laboratories or gym, were grouped together in the same wing, so it didn't take long to follow the current and meander his way there.

The classroom for third period history was as normal as the default of every other. That was the first problem. Textbooks stacked across the back counters, three rusted file cabinets blocked off the window in the back left corner, and a flag stood by the door. A large map adorned the left wall. The back one was blank—no license plates.

Cian paused in the door frame to check the room number. Sure enough, it was right, 131. What wasn't there was Gordon's political cartoon portrait of herself. Instead, he saw plain wood with rectangles of varnish pulled off where tape once had been.

Classmates brushed past Cian, nudging him to the left of the door. He might've heard an insult. He was too stunned to be sure. It'd been six school days since he'd last been in this room. What had happened?

"Grimsgard," Sebastian's voice caressed his ear. "Would you please do us the courtesy of sitting down?"

It seemed inadequate to say a man stood by his desk. First off, Cian was fairly sure it wasn't his desk; it was Mrs. Gordon's, even though most of her knick-knacks had disappeared. More importantly, he held himself with an air befitting the word gentleman. His vest and suit were impeccably tailored, and he stood with such strict posture, he might be able to balance half an encyclopedia on his head. Most strikingly, his eyes were so richly brown that they were better called mahogany. Cian was tempted to think them red, but it had to be a trick of light. Eyes that shade, the pigment of congealing blood, they weren't humanly possible.

The unexpected sight brought Cian to a still, his breath catching partway up his throat. Perhaps this was a substitute, and Mrs. Gordon had suddenly quit.

The teacher smiled, as composed as a symphony. "Do you need help to your seat? If so, I'm certain one of your classmates will do you the courtesy."

The threat of assistance was enough to lower Cian's head. He shrunk into the closest seat, directly beside the door. He tucked his cane beneath his desk, slid out his folder, and flipped to his next clean page of his notebook.

Cian hadn't meant to stare at the new teacher, but he hadn't intended not to. There was an entrancing familiarity about him, as if Cian's instincts were trying to tell him that he either knew this man or had something to fear from him.

Sebastian looked out across the room of students, scrutinizing each one. When their stares crossed, Sebastian lingered, deliberately focusing back on Cian. It was subtle enough to go unseen by anyone but themselves, yet it was plenty to send Cian's stomach plummeting to his feet. The curl on Sebastian's lips was so deceptively pleasant, another inexplicable instinct told Cian he was being mocked.

Sebastian tapped an extendable pointer across the blackboard, the tip hitting a number written in chalk. Every student in the room but Cian rose from their seats, at attention. "Good morning, Mister Michaelis," they greeted in as much unison as could be expected from this bunch.

"To you as well," Sebastian echoed.

The collective class sat back in place, lowering to Cian's level. Sebastian traced the pointer from the page number towards an adjacent chalkboard, where the lesson plan was listed. "We will begin today's lesson with page sixty seven. Pass your papers forwards, then to the right."

Cian checked his old worksheet, assuming he should hand it in, and waited for the other students' papers to come his way. Again, the sight gave him pause. Yesterday's worksheet was the same as his from last week. The only difference was the instructors' name. Where everyone else listed Mr. Michaelis, his said Mrs. Gordon. Something about this was extremely wrong. That was to be expected. In fact, that was Sebastian's point.

Very few options had been available for Sebastian to form a reasonable connection with this new Ciel. Broaching the subject himself would be too far-fetched. It was better to mold a circumstance where Ciel would be compelled approach him.

Bending the memories of humans wasn't much of a challenge. Most of them didn't pay enough attention to the people around them to notice such a minuscule change as a teacher or a co-worker. The only minds he couldn't touch were those protected by demons or magic. If it served no other purpose, this would get the boy's attention. It also gave Sebastian the opportunity to watch him struggle to grasp what was happening, which was fun.

Sebastian collapsed the pointer and set it down beside the chalk. He approached Cian's desk, collected the stack of papers, and adjusted to address the entire class once more. "The reading you completed was a brief overview. Over the next two days, we will examine the original settlements within colonial North America. Today's focus lies upon the United States. Do any of you remember the incentives for potential settlers to come to the US?"

A few of the girls raised their hands into the air. Cian stared vacantly into the grain of his desk. It was tempting for Sebastian to call on him, but there were other students paying even less attention, and it seemed best not to be too overt—yet, anyway.

"Murphy," he distantly recalled the name from his seating chart, and directed the question to the girl in the far right corner. Doe eyed and dumbfounded, she barely stuttered out an answer, which he soon pointed out as utterly wrong.

Cian could hardly remember two sentences from the lesson. There was no room to spare with this problem standing mere feet away, ever looming, familiar. A bell intercepted his thoughts, and the sound of that voice which shouldn't have been present spoke over the intercom's ring. "For the next class, write a short essay. The topic should be the Jamestown colony's original common-store system and what lessons should be taken from its failure. Please emphasize how this could be used to explain opposition of socialist policies. Also, please read pages thirty four to thirty seven in your textbook, ending after the section on Acadia."

Cian followed the line of students out of the classroom. The second they were past the door, he reached for the shoulder of the girl ahead of him. The sudden contact made her shake, to which he uttered a mildly apologetic but rushed "excuse me." This seemed to calm her enough that she wasn't about to spill her books across the floor, so he asked. "This may be a strange question, but, Mr. Michaelis, when did he replace Mrs. Gordon?"

She maintained a straight face, though slightly pained, as if she wanted to escape as soon as possible. She bobbed her head. "Uhm, this year. In, uh, September."

"No." Cian was in class, then. He'd have noticed.

The girl gave an indecisive mix of a nod and a shrug and slipped into the hall. Cian rushed after her. Even with the cane, he managed to fall into step barely one pace behind, plenty close enough to ask over her shoulder. "Are you absolutely sure?"

She nodded and ducked into the stairwell, sprinting away. On the bright side, at least she hadn't cussed him out or hit him. It was a dim bright side.

The time ticked ahead, enough so Cian had to let this be. He trudged his way into English class, slumped in a seat towards the back and pretended to pay attention. He gazed blankly at the pages of their grammar guidebook, dwelling on a question with no clear reply. If he had been in the teachers' view, the flush in his face would have gotten him sent to the nurse.

He waited until his teacher's eyes were on their textbook to slide his cell phone onto his thigh. He typed under his desk, intermittently glancing down to check that his message was spelled correctly. There was one student he trusted would answer him without laughing in his face. He was texting. Dot would laugh at her phone instead.

" _Would it be odd if I were to ask you if Mr. Michaelis started teaching while I was absent?"_ he sent the question into the ether.

He stared up at the board, watching the words without meaning. A minute later, his leg vibrated back. He glimpsed at Dot's reply.  _"Yea. Very. Blow to head give u amnesia? & so ur slightly weirder than normal."_

" _Maybe."_

This time, she answered right away.  _"K. Amnesia's something u can maybe have. Got it."_

" _That isn't how retrograde amnesia works."_

" _R U tryin to joke? Cause thats not how joke works, either."_

Cian tucked his phone into his pocket. He slumped over his notebook. He could hear his teacher lecturing, yet the words were as lost as his thoughts. No discussion on proper comma placement could shake this sense of dread. He swayed towards the wall, placed a hand against his forehead, and struggled to think. He wasn't insane, so his classmates had to be mistaken or lying. But how was that even possible? And, perhaps even more importantly, who the hell was Mr. Michaelis?


	3. Encounter

The dull roars of scattered gossip swirled the cafeteria. Cian tried his best to ignore it. He perched at a corner booth. A brown paper bag rest in the upper right corner. The rest of the table was cluttered with books and straying thoughts.

He’d scrawled a spider map in the back of his English notebook. He leaned onto his right elbow, ruffled through his bangs and stared at the interlocking lines. The two bubbles of major ideas were labeled ‘external’ and ‘internal’. The internal bubble branched off into explanations that he was the source of; a dream, a hallucination, a tumor, a malfunction of the hippocampus, a mental disorder, and death. The external bubble listed everything else; alien abduction, mass hypnosis, alternate universes, the matrix and the supernatural. A single question rest beneath the scattered lines. ‘Why am I immune?’

His options appeared to be much clearer on paper, but that failed to make them easier to accept. All he had were scrambled thoughts and the remains of a meal he really didn't feel like eating.

A shadow cast over him, long, lanky and overtaking the words. “Oi, ghost boy. What’cha got, there?” Dot interrupted, swaying over his shoulder.

Cian’s pencil slipped from his grip. He slammed it shut around the notebook, too startled to be more discreet, and hunched over it. “…Paper.”

Dot waved over his shoulder, towards the page. “Yeah, with stuff on it.”

Cian couldn’t mask that he was hiding something, so he opted for mild bitterness instead. “Ink, bad ideas and emotional distress.”

“Looked sorta like one of them crazy crime walls. Y’know, on CSI and junk? Why ya workin’ on that?”

“Because I hate myself.”

Dot slid into the booth. Her elbows propped up against the few clear spots on the table. “This havta do with you textin earlier? Cause you talkin to me first is sorta weird.”

“Can we discuss literally anything else?”

Dot paused. She reached one hand across the table, grabbed his jacket’s shoulder, and started being annoying in a normal way. “Wanna try out for the school musical? I know ya like that crap, now.”

Cian reached for his lunch. He hid his head behind the bag. “No.”

“We’re doing it.”

“No.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun—“

“For you to torment me. No.”

“Maybe ya could be the villain. Then you’d get ta insult people right in fronta them and teachers’d be happy about it.”

“No.”

She continued like that for the rest of the break, cluttering his head with meaningless arguments, until reality crashed back upon them.

* * *

The day was almost over, and Cian wasn't any closer to an explanation. As he sat staring towards the blank wall of his homeroom during study hall, he’d settled on a new question and who to ask. He needed an exact date, and he wanted to ask a teacher. Specifically, one who was too oblivious to recognize a dumb question.  

Cian stood up from his seat. He felt someone kick him while he walked by. He didn't bother to look who.

The homeroom teacher sat at her desk, reviewing worksheets. Cian tapped lightly against the wood. Her head flitted up, then down again, examining him from scalp to shoes for whatever was wrong. "What do you need? Restroom?"

"May I have a pass to Mr. Holender's room? He requested I make up last week’s sculpture project," he lied.

She gave him a disbelieving look, but wrote him the pass anyway. "Go ahead."

"Thank you, ma'am." Cian nodded to a shallow bow, took the pass and left.

When Cian reached the end of the empty hallway, he approached the door to the art room. He rose to the tip of his functioning foot and squinted through the distorted glass. If there was a single silhouette other than Holender's, he planned to duck into the restroom and hide until the dismissal bell. To his relief, he hadn’t needed to.

At the very edge of his field of vision, Cian could spot a palm-tree like puff of a sandy-blond ponytail poking over an easel. Nothing else was moving. That had to be him.

Cian raised a hand and gently rapped on the door. Mr. Holender sprung to attention. He shoved his paintbrush into his smock and headed towards the door. For some reason, he started to turn around, paced backwards, and turned around again before he finally opened it.  

In the time it had taken Holender to reach the door, the brush in his pocket had smeared green paint stripes all across his smock. Cian gestured towards his torso to signal this. Holender didn't notice. He snatched the permission slip from Cian’s hands and chucked it into the recycling bin. "Well, we won't be needing that. Come in.”

Holender lingered, waiting patiently for an approach that couldn’t come. He was standing in the way. It took another fifteen before Holender realized he was blocking the door. “Ah! Well,” his grin tilted. He waved his hand towards himself and stepped back into the room, beckoning Cian. “In, this way.”

Cian’s cane tapped ahead of him, marking spots on the paint splotched floor. Two dozen easels were arranged in a circle in the center of the room. A clothed table stood directly in the middle, a lone wine bottle perched atop it.

"Someone ate the apple last night. I feel like that should be insulting, somehow, what with teachers and apples, and yet I can’t quite figure out why. Something, something, treacherous snakes, my tiny garden of eden. Or grocer of, I guess…” Holender mumbled.

“When they stole your knowledge, perchance they also abducted your wit?”

“Perchance?” Holender quirked a caterpillar eyebrow. “Perchance I’ll go to the giant Walmart after work. That’s what’s perchancing. Who’s possessing you, the ghost of Shakespeare?” Cian didn’t reply. Holender flicked his wrist, swatting the topic off. "Well, stop standing around like I'll make you leave. Sit down!"

The moment that he extended this offer, Mr. Holender noticed its biggest flaw. There were only easels in the circle, no chairs. He grinned sheepishly. "Ah, uhm, excuse me.” He disappeared into the clutter. A few seconds of rummaging later, he emerged with two folding chairs tow. He plopped one down beside Cian, kicked it open, and repeated the same on his own. "No, really, you should sit down. It's not like these are going to break.”

Cian took the open seat. His gaze fell to the side. Now that he’d made it here, alone, he wasn’t quite sure how to raise his question.

Holender tapped his fingers around his arm and kicked further back, the legs of his chair scratching the floor. "So, then. What’s up? Didn’t think I’d see you ‘til tomorrow.”

“This may sound strange.” He’d tried this three times already. Why was he bothering, again?

"My specialty. Don't worry, just, go on. Sally forth tally oh ho-ing your old timey words." Oh, yeah, because Holender was a lunatic who might answer without questioning him too much.

"Barring graduate school, it transcends a specialty," Cian stalled. Holender twirled his hand in a circle, beckoning Cian to continue. "It's about Mr. Michaelis. Do you know how long he's worked here? Any nuances, unusual behaviors, miscellaneous information that’d be otherwise insignificant?"

“You mean, Mr. tall, dark and straight-laced?” Holender's fuzzy insect eyebrows wiggled curiously. He stretched out and cracked his knuckles. “Started with the school year, so, September. Which. Wait. Weren’t you here, then?”

“Transferred classes,” Cian dismissed.

“Yeah, ok,” Holender was busy enough talking to go with it. “I mean, I guess, he’s not that weird for teachers, here. No offense to them, but, they’re all pretty stiff and humorless, so, he totally fit in. No hobbies. Doesn't seem to eat much, if that counts. But… I've got the feeling I'm not going to say something helpful unless you’re way, way more specific. What’s it matter?”

He needed verification of his psychosis, which, unfortunately, he’d just gotten. “Adjusting to his teaching style. Thought context might help.”

“No way. Don’t buy it. Nopes all around.” Holender pulled his right ankle over his left knee. He wrapped both hands around his foot. "Seriously. Indulge an old man's whims. What, you trying to figure out how old he is or something?"

"I've had my reasons. They’ve been satiated. That's all." Cian maintained a perfectly straight face, hoping this might discourage any further prodding. It didn’t.  

"Need to bribe him?"

Cian didn’t answer.

“Precocious crush?”

Cian sprung off the chair. He wouldn’t have recoiled more if tackled by a cactus. “I forgot Mrs. Gordon left!” In his rush to his feet, he quickly lost his balance. He clutched the easel for support.  

“Whoa!” Holender grabbed the easel’s legs, stabilizing it, and by extent, Cian. His smile laughed for him in a way that made Cian all the more embittered. "Hey, hey. It's ok. Don’t worry. I do stuff like that on accident all the time. Pass by the same ice cream parlor a hundred times only to find it’s a barber shop. It's normal."

"That's pathetic," Cian muttered dryly.

“Get used to it. Being grown up, totally about being pathetic.”

Mercifully, the dismissal bell chimed between them. Cian tugged the strap of his bag up his shoulder. He stepped towards the door, his back to Holender. "See you tomorrow.”

As Cian motioned to leave, Holender sprinted towards him. He thrust his hand overhead, sandwiching Cian between himself and the door. For some reason, his babbling was suddently frantic. "So. That project you missed, the clay vase. I’ll need you to make that up. Would Monday or Tuesday work, after school?”

Cian peered over his shoulder, struggling to glimpse at Holender from the awkward angle. “I’ll ask.” He lowered his head to slip under Holender’s arm, out into the hallway. He was just past the door when he turned around. He pointed towards the paint spot. "By the way, your shading’s discolored.”

"Yeah, yeah. It's a smock. It’s there for that junk."

The door clacked shut behind Cian. He veered towards a back exit, a shortcut through the sorry excuse for a school garden. The brush towards the back was overgrown and for the most part untouched, since nobody lived in that direction, including him. That also made it an ideal way to avoid running into people.

Cian absent mindedly trudged across the cement path, all the while suppressing a sigh. He was so thoroughly consumed by the Michelis problem that until the branches smacked him, he hadn't even noticed he’d walked straight into a bush. Distantly startled, Cian took a quick step back. He stopped when something nipped his ankle. A thin, yellow and black blob, either a wasp or a yellow jacket, had perched angrily over his ankle sock.   

Cian froze, waiting for it to fly away. It didn't. He tensed. The pinch worsened.

Reluctantly and rapidly as possible, Cian reached down, flicked the wasp off, and came as close to sprinting as his healing leg allowed. He rushed along the path, momentarily surprised by how well he could move, considering.

The venom coursed through him. That moment passed, as did the adrenaline, leaving him with nothing but a throb. “Damn it…” Cian clutched the strap of his bag until his knuckles were off-white. Theoretically, he could call for help. Practically, it was too humiliating to bother.

He bent his knee so that the ball of his right foot barely grazed the ground, and all of his body weight was redistributed to his cane. He barely managed five steps in a minute. By the sixth, he overheard something strange. A second pair of footsteps crinkled through the grass, dissonant, briskly paced and steadily increasing.

The moment he made eye contact, any hope washed out into dread at familiar, wine red eyes.  He tried to take another step to escape, but froze partway, cringing.

There was a delay between Sebastian stepping to Cian’s side and voicing a question. Thrice, he had to rephrase so as not to refer to this child as the 'young master’. "May I be of assistance?"

Instinctively, Cian tried to step back. The second that his foot grazed cement, another wave of pain shot through his leg. He retracted his foot, perching on his cane in an oddly similar stance to a plastic lawn flamingo. "I’m perfectly, alright."

"I would hope your posture isn't typically this abysmal."

“You want to pay for etiquette lessons? I’m fine,” Cian insisted. He tried to take another step, but stopped halfway. His annoyance turned into reluctant admittance. "A wasp stung me.”

Sebastian bent at the waist, to reach Cian’s ankle. The back of his hand had hardly brushed Cian’s pant leg before Cian stumbled back. The tip of Cian’s cane hit a crack in the sidewalk, tilting it and by extension him, until he was toppling to the ground. He flinched.  

Sebastian sprinted forward and skidded to an instantaneous stop, landing smoothly upon bended knee. Cian hardly had the chance to realize what was happening before Sebastian caught him in a bridal carry.  Sebastian smiled slyly upon him. "You are not in any condition to walk. Please, allow me to escort you to the infirmary.”

"Wait, what?” The little composure Cian had left flushed out, replaced by a growl. He writhed, shoving both his hands against Sebastian’s chest. "Set me down, now! Gently!”

It wasn’t likely that Sebastian would actually drop him, but Cian wasn't making it easy. Scrawny as he was, he somehow had just enough strength to be a bother. It made Sebastian exasperated enough to sigh in disapproval. "It would be best you not walk on that foot. You would accelerate the inflammation.”

"I can walk!”

"Your behavior indicates otherwise. Your wound should be set with a compress, and it is possible you could enter anaphylactic shock. It would be irresponsible of me to allow you to leave unaccompanied," Sebastian insisted, each point a barb in Cian’s argument. Begrudging, but cooperative for now, Cian shut up.

It was the one, narrow mercy of the situation that the school had emptied out. This situation was embarrassing enough without witnesses.  After a minute of pacing, Sebastian cautiously balanced Cian's legs on his upper arm to free his grip. He pushed the door open, into the nurse’s office.  

Sebastian crossed the room. He gently set Cian on the firm, pleather-like excuse for a cot, then turned his back to allocate supplies. Cian sat upright, his aching ankle dangling towards the floor. 

The walls were a stark white, the ceiling matched, and the gray-toned furniture hadn't been replaced for at least two decades. It was about as inviting and soothing as a lion's den, and somehow, Sebastian knew his way around it as if the room belonged to him. He reached beneath the desk to a mini-fridge, removed an ice pack from the freezer box and wrapped it in a towel.

Cian knew how to take a cue well enough that he had pulled his pant leg up and his sock down. Sebastian pressed the ice against Cian’s ankle. Their hands brushed each other’s, the warmth from their skin practically bounced off the chill until Sebastian retracted, passing the ice pack to Cian. He paced away towards the medicine cabinets.

Cian hand crept up to the side of his face, his right palm setting against the fraying bandages by his cheek. In spite of everything, he was still fixated on that one stupid question of who Sebastian really was.  

While Cian was preoccupied, Sebastian gathered an armful of prospective supplies—an antihistamine, an epi-pen, disinfectant, a pain reliever, and a plastic cup of water. By the time he had returned to Cian’s cot-side, Cian had laid down and turned on his side, away from Sebastian.

Sebastian bent at the waist, extending both the pills and the plastic cup. “As a preventative measure, it would be best to take this.”

“No.”

Sebastian set them both on an end table beside the cot. "Should you change your mind,” he stated, a bit too passionless to be insisting.

Sebastian took a seat across from Cian. He allowed a few seconds to pass, waiting in case the boy had anything to say. He didn’t. In the absence of any input, he opted for a question that made sense in the context of a faculty member. "Shall I call your parents?"

The instantaneous "no" didn't even remotely surprise him.

“It is a legal obligation, to ensure you arrive safely.”

“Then don’t ask permission.”

Sebastian nodded once. “So I shall.” He rose from his chair and approached the nurse’s desk. He evaluated the dozens of scattered pages and general clutter, and picked up a binder in the right hand corner. He opened it about a third of the way, approximating the alphabetical order. His index finger was on Cian’s home number when he heard him interrupt.  

“You won’t get them, regardless. Hospital,” Cian uttered at the wall, his words as stiff as his posture.

Sebastian shut the binder. “For work or treatment?”

“Latter.”

Sebastian was aware this new Ciel had relatives of some kind, but the concept was easier to grasp in theory than reality. He remained pleasant, as if he didn’t find it odd not to know this already. “My deepest condolences. Do you have a guardian in the interim?”

“Yes. No doubt tending to a corpse,” Cian’s eyelids sank, his minimal enthusiasm draining even further. “Step-father. Coroner, not serial murderer.”

“Then you may rest here,” Sebastian set the binder on the desk, in exactly the same spot as he’d found it. His posture reverted to perfect attention. "Is there anything else you might require?"

Cian rolled over on the cot. His messenger bag pressed to his chest. “I’d suppose.”

“Might you care to tell me?”

“No.”

Being shown hostility for no particular reason—this was familiar. He maintained a false smile “If you fail to inform me of your needs, there’s little I can do to provide for them.”

All the while, Cian sill kept his back turned. “You couldn’t, regardless.”

“I believe my capacities are far broader than you appear to expect.”

Cian covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow, huddling further away. His opposite arm curled under himself, into his messenger bag.  “Commit genocide against wasps?”

“The ecosystem may find such an act problematic,” Sebastian cut himself off before any instinctive sirs could slip in. In the context of teacher and pupil, he had no reason to show a student respect, all the more so when he kept being a sardonic brat.

 “So are people.” Cian coughed into his elbow. His other arm pulled out from under him and the messenger bag he’d been rummaging through. A glimmer of silver shifted up his sleeve.

The motion was smoothly executed, but poorly timed. Sebastian had been scrutinizing every millimeter of him. The sudden metallic flash couldn’t go unnoticed. Whether he found it amusing or insulting, he’d yet to decide.  

Sebastian maintained his posture, projecting an image of calm, polished dignity. “Have you any requests not negated by your sarcasm?”

Cian’s blade-concealing hand curled into a fist. He paused, struggling to form the words. He had to ask. If he didn’t, each passing second would keep ending with his instincts screaming he would die. "Tell me what you are."

Before Cian had the opportunity to so much as blink, Sebastian grabbed his wrist. His fingers twisted in a vice grip, pressing the blade against Cian’s skin, not breaking, but close.

"Then, please, tell me, whatever do you intend to gain by knowing?" Sebastian asked, a smile spreading across his lips. No sooner had it reared was it replaced by a mild, possibly malicious smirk.

Cian meant to retaliate, yet in that second, he could barely manage a whisper. “Context.”

Sebastian’s head bowed partway, a fraction of a nod. He reached two fingers up Cian’s sleeve, pulled the knife from his grasp and dropped it to the floor. The metal clinked on the tile. "There is a reason why I cannot touch you as I have the others. Take from that what you will."

For some inexplicable reason, the first interpretation to come to mind was age of consent laws. Cian choked past that, to the most logical of illogical options. “Because I’ve gone mad?”

“It would depend. To accept truths the world hides from itself, is that also madness? Or do you consider that clarity?” Sebastian released Cian's wrist, allowing his numb arm to fall as limp as the rest of him. Cian’s eyelids lowered, defensive. Apparently, Sebastian had taken this a step too far. "The rest shall become apparent when it's needed. However, I promise that I will not do you harm.”

The effort at comfort was as weak as it was ultimately useless, if the pallor of Cian’s skin was any indication. His breath staggered while he struggled so vainly to maintain a look of authority. "That’s not reason to believe you.”

“To the contrary, it’s precisely that. I presume you possess enough insight to infer how. Or is such faith misplaced?” Sebastian asked in suave mockery, his tone so smooth, it nearly hissed as might a boiling kettle. “Allow me to ask again. Is there anything else you might require?”

Cian allowed his head to fall back against the astonishingly lumpy pillow beside the plaster wall. His left arm wrapped around his legs, condensing himself. “Crutches. Leftmost cabinet. Bring them here.”

Sebastian didn’t want to encourage any more movement than necessary. It was, however, a direct order, and at the moment he was under the impression it would be best to listen. He found a key on the nurse’s desk, opened the cabinet and brought them to Cian’s bedside.

Cian forced himself to sit at the ledge of the bed. He reached over the side with his better foot to pull his knife back towards him. Sebastian chose not to mention as much when offering the crutches. “As you requested.”

Cian tucked both crutches beneath his arms, planted the tips against the ground and stood. What surprise he had at Sebastian listening to instructions was quickly overridden by the need to flee.    

Within the thirty seconds it had taken to retrieve the crutches, Sebastian’s demeanor had reverted to his unflappably courteous default. "In the absence of a guardian, I can escort you home," he offered, literally looking down on Cian. Cian had little doubt the metaphorical also applied.

"I can manage.”

Sebastian’s pace aligned with Cian’s, his steps shortening to match Cian’s stride. "You needn’t persist through such strain.”

Cian planted his cane down and pivoted, his head snapping towards Sebastian. “You shouldn’t persist at all!” He stomped out of the room, remarkably quick for someone balancing on crutches.

Sebastian held his ground, obeying the implied command if only because it gave him reason to pause. He paced back towards the cot and reached to the forgotten cane resting beneath the mattress. His gloved hand brushed across the metal pole. He’d have to return this.

* * *

It was an unpleasant journey home. Still, Cian managed. He could recognize his house from two blocks away, not just because the powder blue trimming on the otherwise gray cottage was especially distinctive, but because it was the only spot in the block without a car in the driveway yet. Of course, Vaughn wasn’t home. People kept dying. Mortality was annoying that way.

Cian paused by the front door. First, he checked the mail box, which was only notable in that it was already empty. He disregarded the thought and opened the door.

What he’d anticipated was darkness and the generally unwelcome one-cat welcoming committee. Instead, he was greeted by the warm aroma of spices, sauce and sautéed onions. There was a lamp turned on in the main hallway, one he’d left off and Vaughn never bothered to use. Every wall, table, carpet fiber and picture frame was scrubbed spotless. He pressed his back against the door.

This wasn’t right. Someone had been here since he’d left this morning, and they weren’t family. If it was a thief, the house would have been ransacked, not cleaned, not unless they’d thought they could scourge the evidence without leaving more while picking up. Besides, what sort of thief left the light on?

Unnerved, Cian set the lock. He followed the light and scent to the kitchen, mentally bracing for something that shouldn’t have been there. Instead, he found the cat. Eulalie perched in the middle of the table, hovering around a steaming hot plate. She poked her nose into the steam.

"Laylie, down," Cian ordered.

Eulalie looked up just long enough to stare at him, possibly wondering what his problem was, and promptly returned to what she was doing. Exasperated as usual, Cian limped to the table. He picked her up and plopped her on the floor.

A single place had been set. The good china had been removed from the cabinet that Cian could never reach. A large heap of spaghetti parmesan, garnished with a single sprig of basil, cast a continuous puff of steam into the air. A warm loaf of bread with an oil dip rest close by.

Cian poked his fork into the center and twirled it about, considering what to do. He’d held his ground for maybe three seconds before Eulalie trotted over. He flailed a crutch at her to shoo her off, then hunched over the setting, considering whether or not it was safe for consumption.

He was too absorbed in his thoughts to spot Eulalie nuzzling near him. She pressed her face straight against his ankle. He cringed, then dropped into his seat. The smell invaded his nose. It was tauntingly tantalizing enough he’d risk drooling if he didn’t at least try, so he relented and did just that.

It was one of the most delicious things he'd ever tasted.

Cian was a quarter of the way through the plate when he heard the door rattle. He fumbled to clutch a butter knife.

“Apologies. Elder in a meat locker. Couldn’t leave them. I’ve come bearing a disproportionate amount of Thai. Food, not—“ Vaughn marched through the hallway. A paper bag crinkled by his side, and two more bags sank under his eyes. He paused in the doorway, his cheek pressed limply to the door. The frame parted his curls. “You cooked?”

Cian dropped the knife. He raised a cloth napkin to his mouth—one he’d not noticed was fabric until it was pressing to his lips. “No.”

“I mean, you initiated chemical reactions and nothing incinerated? Unintentionally?”

Cian didn’t know how to admit to this, so he settled for being so honest, it sounded sarcastic. “Someone broke in, left dinner.”

Vaughn nudged the left corner of his glasses. He blinked thrice, struggling to look conscious. “What?”

“It’s not mine.”

Even though Cian couldn’t manage to look him in the eye and say so, even though it was as bizarre as it was stupid, Vaughn didn’t question if Cian was lying. He fought off his flickering eyelids and swayed off the door. “Generous for a trespasser. Didn’t even mar the lock. Should I get a tox screen kit?” He wasn’t joking.

Cian flicked his napkin in dismissal. “If I’m conscious for an hour, it’s fine.”

Vaughn dropped the bag of take out on the table. He took out a plastic fork and poked the prongs through the packaging. “Eating it is, then. A stranger’s cooking kills you, we go together.”

Cian pulled the plate towards himself and started to turn his back. “It’s fine.”

Before he could orient the necessary degrees away, Vaughn stuck his fork on the plate. He shoveled a bite in. His glasses fogged with the steam of the spaghetti. The second it touched his tongue, his eyes lit up, awake and worse, thinking. “It’s dissolving. Melting, rather. I thought melting food was a turn of phrase.”

“It is.” Cian slouched and swiveled in his chair, guarding the meal. Eulalie’s tail thwacked his leg. He budged.

“I’d never expected to say this, but we should definitely consider having more culinary-based trespassers.” Vaughn pressed the back of his hand to his chin, considering something. He stared at the plate. “Do we even own these dishes?”

“No.” Cian took another bite.

“I can cope with this. The robin hood of food.” Vaughn rest his forearms along the edge of the table, leaning over it without taking the second chair. Within three seconds, his eyelids were already drooping. “Want a drink?”

“No.”

Vaughn pulled a box of noodles from the paper bag. He swayed towards the living room. “Want to watch TV and mock the scientific inaccuracies?”

“…Sure.”

Without any questions about his day, or his sanity, Vaughn tread on to the living room. Cian brought his plate. He didn't care much for what was on the TV. All he needed was a distraction.

He nodded off on the couch at about a quarter to eight, an empty plate in hand, unnaturally sedated but otherwise fine. For now, it didn't matter that the world around him was falling apart. In dreams, the world was blank.


End file.
